Page 70 - Essencials of Sociology

What Is Culture? 43

Cultural Diversity around the World

You Are What You Eat? An Exploration

in Cultural Relativity
Here is a chance to test your ethnocentrism and ability to
practice cultural relativity. You probably know that the French
like to eat snails and that in some Asian cultures, chubby dogs
and cats are considered a delicacy (“Ah, lightly browned with
a little doggy sauce!”). You might also know that in some
cultures, the bull’s penis and testicles are prized foods (Jakab
2012). But did you know that cod sperm is a delicacy in Japan
(Halpern 2011)? That flies, scorpions, crickets, and beetles
are on the menu of restaurants in parts of Thailand (Gampbell
2006)? That on the Italian island of Sardinia, casu marzi, a
cheese filled with live maggots, is popular (Herz 2012)? began. “They buy into a monkey feast. The eaters sit
Marston Bates (1967), a zoologist, noted this ethnocentric around a thick wood table with a hole in the middle. Boys
reaction to food: bring in the monkey at the end
of a pole. Its neck is in a collar
I remember once, in the lla-
nos of Colombia, sharing a dish at the end of the pole, and it is
of toasted ants at a remote screaming. Its hands are tied be-
farmhouse. . . . My host and hind it. They clamp the monkey
I fell into conversation about into the table; the whole table
the general question of what fits like another collar around its
people eat or do not eat, and neck. Using a surgeon’s saw, the
I remarked that in my country cooks cut a clean line in a circle
people eat the legs of frogs. at the top of its head. To loosen
The very thought of this the bone, they tap with a tiny
filled my ant-eating friends hammer and wedge here and
with horror; it was as though there with a silver pick. Then an
I had mentioned some repul- old woman reaches out her hand
sive sex habit. to the monkey’s face and up to
its scalp, where she tufts some
Then there is the experience of What some consider food, even delicacies, can turn the hairs and lifts off the lid of the
a friend, Dusty Friedman, who stomachs of others. These roasted grub worms were for sale in skull. The eaters spoon out the
told me: Bangkok, Thailand. brains.”
When traveling in Sudan,
I ate some interesting things that I wouldn’t likely eat now
that I’m back in our society. Raw baby camel’s liver with For Your Consideration
chopped herbs was a delicacy. So was camel’s milk cheese ↑ What is your opinion about eating toasted ants? Beetles?
patties that had been cured in dry camel’s dung. Flies? Fried frog legs? Cod sperm? Maggot cheese? About
eating puppies and kittens? About eating brains scooped out
You might be able to see yourself eating frog legs and of a living monkey?
toasted ants, beetles, even flies. (Or maybe not.) Perhaps you
could even stomach cod sperm and raw camel liver, maybe ↑ If you were reared in U.S. society, more than likely you
even dogs and cats, but here’s another test of your ethnocen- think that eating frog legs is okay; eating ants or beetles
trism and cultural relativity. Maxine Kingston (1975), an Eng- is disgusting; and eating flies, cod sperm, maggot cheese,
lish professor whose parents grew up in China, wrote: dogs, cats, and monkey brains is downright repugnant.
How would you apply the concepts of ethnocentrism
“Do you know what people in [the Nantou region and cultural relativism to your perceptions of these
of] China eat when they have the money?” my mother customs?

much as we do for U.S. cities. He also asks why we should consider cultures that practice
female circumcision, gang rape, or wife beating, or cultures that sell little girls into pros-
titution, as morally equivalent to those that do not. Cultural values that result in exploi-
tation, he says, are inferior to those that enhance people’s lives.